Welfare State

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
        --William Boetcker

"If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side."
        --Orson Scott Card, Novelist

"And here we encounter the seeds of government disaster and collapse -- the kind that wrecked ancient Rome and every other civilization that allowed a sociopolitical monster called the welfare state to exist."
        --Barry Goldwater

"Idleness and lack of occupation tend -- nay are dragged -- towards evil."
        --Hippocrates

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
        --James Madison

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
        --James Madison

"The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 -- to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell."
        --P.J. O'Rourke, Eat the Rich

"When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves."
        --George Pataki

"Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel."
        --Ayn Rand

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.'"
        --Ronald Reagan

"Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."
        --Ronald Reagan

"I think the best possible social program is a job."
        --Ronald Reagan

"We are sure living in a peculiar time. You get more for not working than you will for working, and more for not raising a hog than for raising it."
        --Will Rogers

"A government policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul."
        --George Bernard Shaw

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."
        --George Bernard Shaw

"Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes."
        --Thomas Sowell